The invention relates to adhesive imaging materials. In a preferred form it relates to the use of silver halide pressure sensitive reflective media for the printing images that can be post processed laminated to display substrates.
Prior art photographic albums typically require the consumer to manually insert conventional prints into a classic sleeve, or use adhesive to bond conventional prints to blank album pages. This is a time consuming, difficult operation that provides less than satisfactory results. Consumers often procrastinate and do not place prints in albums when they receive them from the photofinisher, risking loosing time and event references. When adhesives are used to maintain the prints in the album, alignment becomes critical. Additionally, many adhesives can damage a print and often fail after time, thus, allowing the prints to fall out of the album. Also, in addition to purchasing separate binder album pages, adhesive and other items may need to be purchased.
Professional photographic labs currently provide high quality images to the advertising and display industry for product advertising, point of purchase displays and trade show graphics. Presently, the lab print images using silver halide or ink jet imaging technology onto standard high quality paper and post printing laminate the images to substrates that provide structure to the image for display. The lamination of the image to the substrate typically occurs with a double sided pressure sensitive tape. It would be desirable if the use of the lamination tape could be eliminated to improve the efficiency of the work flow in the professional labs.
It is well known in the pressure sensitive adhesive industry to provide a pressure sensitive adhesive removability feature by carefully controlling the pressure sensitive adhesive coat weight within a certain range. While controlling the coat weight of the pressure sensitive adhesive does provide removability of the pressure sensitive adhesive for a period of time, the activation time for pressure adhesive with controlled coat weight varies considerably because of coat weight variation in the manufacturing operation. Repositioning pressure sensitive adhesive with controlled coat weight applied to image media would result in unpredictable repositioning time and ultimate bond strength for consumers and therefore would not be suitable for scrapbook and album applications were a predictable repositioning time and ultimate strength are required.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,045,965, a photographic member with a peelable and repositioning adhesive member is discussed. While the adhesive discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,045,965 does reposition to a variety of surfaces, the adhesive formulations disclosed do not form permanent bonds between the photographic member and cellulose paper album pages. Therefore, the photographic member is not optimized for scrapbooks and albums were a permanent bond is valued. Further, the imaging member described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,045,965 disclose a thin, durable polymer sheet for repositioning an image. While the thin durable sheet does have high value for most consumer applications, lamination of the print to surfaces that are rough typically requires a base that is thick and strong to reduce the amount of image side embossing by rough lamination surfaces such as painted walls, cellulose paper board, fabric and flooring surfaces.
Typically pressure sensitive labels are supplied with a liner web material that allows the pressure sensitive label to be transported though the printing process and converting process while protecting the adhesive. Prior art liner materials typically comprise a coated paper or a thin polymer liner onto which a release coating is subsequently provided. Liner materials typically utilized in the pressure sensitive label are not suitable for a photographic images. Problems such as photographic reactivity with the light sensitive layers, lack of stiffness of the liner, and edge penetration of processing chemistry into the paper used as a liner prevent typical polymer and paper liners from being utilized for photographic pressure sensitive labels.
There is a need for pressure sensitive imaging media that utilizes a liner material that can be efficiently conveyed through the image creation process while maintaining the quality of the image.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved photograph and album system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a base material that reduces the amount of image side embossing in lamination applications.
It is still yet another object of the present invention to provide a liner material that allows for efficient transport through printing and processing of images.
These and other objects of the invention are accomplished by an imaging element comprising an imaging layer, a pragmatic imaging sheet comprising paper having a resin coat on each side, adhesively adhered to a carrier sheet with a pressure-sensitive adhesive, wherein said carrier sheet comprises at least one core layer of polyester and a rough lower surface layer.
The invention provides improved image quality for imaging adhesive media materials. The invention also significantly reduces the amount of image side embossing caused by pressure sensitive lamination to rough surfaces.